Brazil will head to the semifinals of the World Cup next week without Neymar, its best player and the face of the tournament.

Neymar, 22 years old, suffered a fractured vertebra in his lower back in the Seleção's 2-1 quarterfinal victory over Colombia on Friday evening and isn't expected to recover in time to play again in the tournament, team doctor Rodrigo Lasmar said after the game.

Neymar, who plays club soccer for Barcelona, has been the star of an otherwise unspectacular Brazilian team here, with four goals through five games and the assist on the side's first goal on Friday. His image is plastered all over the country, on everything from gigantic shoe ads to campaigns for home electronics. At times, the entire tournament seemed to be gearing up to his appearance in the July 13 final on the nation's biggest stage, Rio de Janeiro's Maracanã Stadium

Brazil's Neymar delivered a message to his fans by video, promising that although he will miss the World Cup semifinal due to an injury, the team will still be victorious. Photo/Video: AP/CBF

Brazil's star player Neymar suffered a fractured vertebra in his lower back when Colombia's Juan Zúñiga struck him in the small of his back near the end of Friday's match. Brazil will move on to the semifinals of the World Cup next week without Neymar. Photo: Getty

Losing Neymar wasn't the only blow for the hosts in what feels like a Pyrrhic victory. The Seleção's inspirational captain, Thiago Silva, will miss out on Tuesday's semifinal against Germany in Belo Horizonte because of accumulated yellow cards.

ENLARGE

David Luiz celebrates at the end of Brazil's victory over Colombia.
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Neymar appeared to sustain the injury when Colombia's Juan Zúñiga struck him in the small of his back in the dying minutes of the game. The Brazilian spent several minutes face down on the ground before being carried off on a stretcher in obvious pain.

Zúñiga later told reporters that he never meant to do Neymar any harm. Brazilian fans, meanwhile, immediately convened outside Neymar's hospital in Fortaleza. The star's injury holds such national significance in a country where his No. 10 jersey is everywhere that even president Dilma Rousseff weighed in.

"Like all Brazilians, I am in solidarity with Neymar," she tweeted from her official account.

Without those two stars, Brazil faces its first trip back to the final four in 12 years lacking a natural game-changer and its emotional leader. The matchup against Germany, which defeated France earlier in the day, will be a rerun of the 2002 final, when Brazil sealed its fifth World Cup title.

Ever since, winning a sixth has been a national obsession.

But if Silva can't contribute in the semis, he can at least claim a large role in getting his team there. He put Brazil in front within the first 10 minutes before a 30-yard free kick by his partner in central defense, David Luiz, made it 2-0 in the second half. Things became uncomfortable late after Colombia's James Rodriguez scored an 80th-minute penalty kick, yet Brazil survived the onslaught.

A Big Bug Lands in the World Cup

Colombia's midfielder James Rodriguez doesn't seem to be aware that a winged visitor, left, has joined him on the pitch during the quarterfinal World Cup match with Brazil on Friday. AFP/Getty Images

"We had a last 20-25 minutes that were much more difficult than expected," Brazil head coach Luiz Felipe Scolari said, before he knew the extent of Neymar's injury.

In a week in which the mental health of the Brazilian players became a matter of national concern, it wasn't the players' brains that fans should have been worried about. It was their hearts and lungs and legs.

Inside the throbbing Estádio Castelão, the two sides produced the most frantic half-hour of the World Cup yet. If Germany-France was a controlled exercise in tactical efficiency, this was a pickup game on fast-forward.

Scolari had said before the game that Colombia was a "much more playable" side than Chile, which put Brazil through a 120-minute physical battle in the round of 16. With Neymar and Rodriguez orchestrating things, these teams would come to play, he thought, not kick each other. "There's no war with Colombia," Scolari said.

But it wasn't jogo bonito—the beautiful game—either. Brazil's performance was something entirely less, well, Brazilian. Consider that the Seleção, the team with the proudest attacking tradition in the game, relied on two goals by two defenders on two set pieces.

Unburdened by beautiful play, Brazil stuck to a physical style, clobbering Colombia's playmakers when it needed to, and breaking with powerful runners all over the field. The home team committed 31 fouls in the game to Colombia's 23 for a tournament-high 54 combined.

The referee, Carlos Velasco Carballo of Spain, was unusually permissive. He only showed four yellow cards all night as the game grew increasingly physical.

"In every play there was a lot of intensity. That interrupted the game," Colombia coach José Pékerman said. "You get fouls and the good players cannot find continuity."

Rodriguez discovered that the hard way. Fernandinho and his midfield cohorts used any means necessary to close down the 22-year-old star. And he wouldn't worry Brazil until late.

Still, the game started with the most breathless 30 minutes of the tournament, as the teams combined for 27 so-called dangerous attacks, according to FIFA statistics. But the only trace of them on the scoreboard at halftime was Silva's seventh-minute goal. Neymar curled in a corner kick that found an unmarked Silva at the far post. He knocked it in with his knee to push the already-deafening noise inside the stadium to something like a space-shuttle launch.

The second half was less manic. It had to be. Once Luiz's free kick flew into the net, the fans began looking ahead to the sixth of Scolari's seven steps, a semifinal.

Make no mistake, Brazil was a flawed team even with Neymar. The defense is shaky. Its calamitous handling of a second-half free kick, which wound up with Colombia putting the ball in the net, was only absolved by the an offside call.

And the side hasn't had a forward who could keep up with the invention of Neymar since he first appeared on the scene. Fred, Hulk and Jo have hardly captured the imagination at this tournament.

I don't know why the press is saying that this was unintentional. He might not have been intending to break Neymar's back, but he certainly meant to try and hurt him. Zúñiga jumped him from behind on a header and bent his knee as he crashed into his back. It was at the end of a frustrating game where Brazil had fouled repeatedly and with impunity from the ref who did not give out yellow cards when they were warranted. Of course he meant to cause pain and maybe knock Neymar out of the game. One bucktoothed bite fetishist takes a brief, tiny nibble of an Italian player's shirt and it gets him a ban for months, but some sore loser intentionally sticks his knee into the back of an opposing player and maims him, maybe even ending his career and it gets a shrug.

I cannot disagree more to the comments about the referee. The problem here is there is no transparent process in the referee system that can improve and fix the quality. What needs to be fixed is the system itself. It is true that a right and balanced judgement is a very difficult target than can be said as the game is a very dynamic animal and where and how much judgement is needed remain subjective to a certain extent. But that is why we need a systematic approach to improve the quality and fix what should not have been done.

Neymar's loss is significant in terms of Brazil and World Cup itself. I really wish he would be back in the future with a stronger mind.

"The referee, Carlos Velasco Carballo of Spain, was unusually permissive."

Yes, and I blame the referee for Neymar's injury. The Colombians were fouling unnecessarily because thanks to the poor refereeing they knew they could get away with fouls that could sideline opponents.

The referee really allowed all this to happen by being very permissive with fouls. The players were whacking each other left and right. At one point, a Columbian went for Hulk's knee, lucky the Brazilian is a monster who feels no pain. The Brazilians also did their worst.

Also, I counted several offside calls that weren't really offsides, including one where the ball ended up in Brazil's net. Normally I'd give the ref the benefit of the doubt on offside calls, but not this ref, he was so terrible.

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